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After a long time of playing Jade Regent on and off, and more months than it usually takes me to run through an adventure with a group, we've finally finished Jade Regent!
It was refreshing to see a group which at its humble beginnings seemed doomed to tear each other apart finally come together and use proper teamwork to dominate the final battle without so much as a single death!
Sure things looked grim at first when the Cleric (with dumped INT) succumbed to Renshii Meida's Maze on round 1, and Anamurumon hit hard and often with full attacks, but they bounced back from that.
The fact that the enemy had deliberately horrible teamwork (because the party paid off the Raven Prince and let the rest know of all the reasons they should hate each other) really hammered home the difference. The Jade Regent turning on Anamurumon and killing him when he fell to low health was something which, in the past, would have been more likely to happen on the side of the PCs than the villains. Same goes for Renshii Meida being ignored by her allies while Ameiko tore her apart.
The Regent himself hung on for an impressively long time, his high AC and hp, and Resolve abilities making it hard to do much to him, but in the long run he'd killed and scared off his own allies, leaving himself alone against a group that stood together.
Now hopefully I'll manage enough time to get back to Rise of the Runelords.
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Congratulations.
My group finished recently and it was both exhilarating a sad. The did not lose a person but multiple were in the single digits.
I couldn't bring myself to totally remove a Player from the final fight through Maze so Meida hit Shalelu as she could have mowed them down from a distance.
Did you do much epilogue? I had about 3 pages that covered the general future (based on their RP score) along with individual NPC futures. I then had the player's give a personal epilogue for their character. There was even some player tears at the end of this great Adventure Path.
Congrats! I am a bit surprised that you thought the Jade Regent had a high armor class, though, given that he only is at 30 for a level 15 party.
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Congrats on completing it. Im running it right now and we are just entering book 6: The empty Throne.
And I want to ask you something; How did you manage the level up in this book?
The PCs begin 13 level and they go to the Well of Demons and they get out 14 in their first rest. After that is the final showdown in the palace. When are they resting to get the final level? They clear the half castle and leave? How did you level up your players?
Well, having to rest to level is more of a house-rule. Nonetheless, I leveled them to 15 after finishing the well.
They still have to rest to get the new spells, abilites etc
When did you leveled them to 14?
I've experimented with no-rest level-ups. There's no serious harm in letting, for example, a wizard instantly fill his newly gained spell slots, especially if you make him declare at the start of the day what they'll be. (These were the spells he was trying to prepare this morning, and he wasn't mentally ready to cast them before, but now he is...)
I made my PCs do the entire palace in one day without resting, with no NPC allies, fighting an extra mithral golem and level 15 barbarian (former PC) along the way, and threw an extra soldier or two into the final battle, and it was still too easy for them...
I had Meida wait until she identified the most dangerous PC and then use Maze.
My epilogue largely consisted of letting my PCs turn on one another, fading out without resolving who wound up on the throne.
After finishing the well.
So you leveled them to 14 after leaving the well and to 15 after leaving the well? xD
No, I leveled them to 14 before entering the well and to 15 after leaving it. They did some additional stuff in the city, so they reached the plateau I wanted them to reach at those points.
I did a degree of mention of what happened to Minkai after the conclusion, much of it positive, though the party making a deal with the daemons in the well earlier would eventually lead to Ameiko's unfortunate damnation to Abbadon, as well as the damnation of a long line of her descendants.
One of the PCs who didn't make it to the end (he was corrupted by the ninja artifact and was killed in the process of trying to team-kill them) also got special mention as everyone was eager to dig through the bestiaries and decide on which kind of demon he'd become.
We decided he had been significant enough to have "earned" a transformation into a Shachath Demon (From the Bestiary of AP #75).
Congrats! I am a bit surprised that you thought the Jade Regent had a high armor class, though, given that he only is at 30 for a level 15 party.
They don't particularly optimize (I'd say about half the party doesn't really know how to, and the other half deliberately sacrifices optimization for roleplay) so 30 was a bit high for them. Ameiko (played as a PC and retrained as a Samurai) and the party Barbarian could each generally hit him on their first attack each round, but the regent has a lot of HP to go through.
Also the final few rounds were filled with hilariously awful rolls from everyone, both players and Regent. It was finally finished with a glorious critical hit from the cleric, who was wielding Suishen.
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So you leveled them to 14 after leaving the well and to 15 after leaving the well? xD
Actually, we used the "rest to level up" house rule, and ended up in the final battle at level 14. The wizard of the group had a Getaway ready, but it never got used.
I don't "sacrifice optimization for roleplay" when I can do both well; the worst I do is pursue a situational tactic or two, such as disguising everyone as Ameiko or risking the occasional Fort save spell on the guy who probably has the best Fort save of the group. It worked before!
Really, after the final battle, I was hoping Ameiko's player would ad-lib a grand speech. Instead, we opted for a lengthy "Where Are They Now" credits photo-montage ending. Sandru's caravan was completely forgotten, though I assume he'd become rich and get an easier return trip.
As for that critical hit? Suishen was Flaming Burst by that point, the cleric had a re-worked version of Sarenrae's religion trait for Shizuru (bonus heat damage on a crit), and the attack was a Channel Smite.
I was really impressed and relieved by the whole thing. That was the first adventure path I'd ever finished, and our GM got a standing ovation.
You sacrifice a bit.
Wizard firing off arrows instead of spells when he loses his temper does not spell 'optimization', for example. :P
Congrats Gluttony! It's always nice to see other GMs successfully finish an AP. It's a lot of work to pull through and a rewarding achievement. :)
Any thoughts on the AP? I'll probably never get to GM this one since some of my players have GM'd/played it in another group, but it's always interesting to hear people's thoughts on how things went, what you enjoyed or would change.
Jade Regent as a story was excellent, but I did make a few changes.
Heck, I started the thread about making changes.
Caravan rules were the biggest change, and by change, I mean I trashed them after we realized that they were going to TPK the party with every single random encounter across the crown of the world. Aside from that, we played through mostly as-written. Mostly.
Though it can be hard to choose a favourite part, my favourite was likely the final encounter of the 5th book. They pulled together so well against attacking Oni, everyone got to do something worthwhile in the fight, and it was fun to see their reactions to being attacked after they'd already assumed that they'd have to take on the strongest of the enemy oni during the final assault on the palace. It totally caught them off guard when the Five Storms sent a trio of super-powerful high ranking Oni to kick down their doors for a change.